Voyager: End Game

This post is about the Voyager Series Finale. There are a lot of spoilers so read with care.

About a week ago, Scott and I settled in to watch the final episode of Voyager. The problem is, once it started, I never seemed to actually settle. I stopped to put on my pajamas. To grab a drink. To make a batch of popcorn in our cast iron pot. I'd scoot around the kitchen in my socks trying to look at anything but the TV.

I just didn't want it to end.

I've had about a week to think about that. A week to process it and understand why it bothered me so much to see Voyager specifically coming to an end and I think I've got it figured out.

Beyond the fact (yes, it's a non-subjective fact) that End Game is a great series finale with lots of beautiful character moments, this last episode and all of Voyager is about a family. It's a cobbled-together family, formed not by blood but by chance and luck and choice. They're close--closer than any other Star Trek crew and they have the most specific mission: Get home.

The finale joins them twenty-six years from the last time we saw them. Janeway and most of her crew are attending a Voyager reunion party on Earth. Barclay (an adopted member of the family) is there along with B'Elanna and Tom and Naomi Wildman's little girl. The Doctor is there with his hot, young wife and Janeway is there looking like a total badass grandma. It's clear she's got something going on and we find out soon enough that she's planning to go back in time and help her past self reach the Alpha Quadrant much, much sooner. If she does, then maybe she won't have lost Seven of Nine (who, in her timeline, died on an away mission) and maybe Tuvok (who is suffering from mental illness) would have access to treatment in time. She won't have to lose all the crewmen who died after we last saw them. And, being Janeway, she succeeds.

Admiral Janeway sacrifices herself to get her crew home twenty-six years faster.  But, instead of making me happier, it made me sad. The crew I saw at the reunion was a family forged in hardship, over many, many years. Would they still be as close after only seven years in the Delta Quadrant? Would they still come together for reunions? Would Barclay still be a part of their family? Would they go their separate way as soon as they made it to Starfleet?

All of this makes me think about the little family that sprung from this blog. I'm thinking about you. It's only been eleven months but it's been a crazy, hectic, stressful, amazing, fantastic eleven months. I've written things here, opened myself up, in ways that I never really considered doing before. I've learned more about who I am and who I want to be by way of Star Trek and you've been here for all of it.

That's why, if Future AshleyRose sat down beside me and said, "You're finished with the project. You need to stop." I couldn't do it. I fully intend to keep watching and writing. I hope you'll come with me.